"The Swimmer"...WIP

I didn't have a lot of time to paint today, but did manage a little time with my brush and paint.  Here is today's progress.

This is turning out to be some pretty tedious painting so things move along rather slowly.  At the moment it is difficult for me to wrap my head around the painting like I should so I just have to paint a little bit at a time.  I paint a little, leave it for a little while, then come back and paint a little then repeat the steps all day long.  Not the most ideal way to paint because I can't really get in the flow of the painting but it is the best I can manage at the time.  Do you ever have to just "make do" with the time you have to paint... and be happy you have that much?

These are some thoughts from Timothy Clark when he was at Watermedia 2003 in Houston. (Gosh that was a long time ago!!)

• Line inherits shape, shape inherits form, form is enhanced by value, value is enhanced by color.
• Pattern is 2-D and texture is 3-D.
• If you deal with shape and value, form will take care of itself.
• Composition is the way you organize the elements ~ organize with an underlying element (ie - triangles)
• Be aware of the emotion that you want.
• Local color + Light + Shadow = fully rounded form.
• If you paint orange on top of yellow your blue won't turn green in a sky.

Be Still My Art,


Kay

New Painting

Yesterday I started on a new painting.  I did the drawing and used maskit on the areas I wanted to remain white.  That was pretty tedious work so I didn't get any painting done other than a wash of blue over the entire painting.  Today I have had more time to paint so I have made decent progress on it.

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This is one of those paintings where the details will make or break things... IMO!  I don't have a lot of patience so I have to work on the painting a bit, then get away from it for a bit... then go back and work on it some more, and so on.  Slowly, usually very slowly, it begins to pull together.    Do you ever work on paintings with lots of details?  Do you ever get lost in all the little shapes?  Value will be a big key to this painting... that is what will pull the small shapes together into big shapes.

 Color Formulas (in case you don't have them already or have forgotten about them...):

• Burnt Sienna + Ultramarine = very attractive gray which dries with subtle granular patterns. (An excellent mixture for painting skies)
• Raw Umber is ideal for dulling blues, yellows and greens.
• Paint several sequences of colors in areas that move from light to shadow:

                   Red, Carmine, Violet - warm shadow

                   Thalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Violet - cool shadow

• A neutral gray blue - Cobalt Blue + Burnt Sienna
• Shadows:

                  Dark Shadows- Winsor Blue + Permanent Alizarin Crimson

                  Intermediate Shadows- French Ultramarine Blue + Perm. Aliz. Crimson

                  Subtle Shadows- French Ultra. Blue + Perm. Rose

                  Vary the shadows from cooler (more blue) to warmer (more red)

                  Warmer in foreground, cooler in background

Be Still My Art,

Kay         

            

Daydreamer... Completed!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was a good day for my mom and she slept most of the morning.  Her sleeping allowed me time to paint... I keep a monitor in my studio so I can hear her and know if she needs me.  It felt so good to paint for several uninterrupted hours.  Painting has been my "Saving Grace".

Some things to keep in mind when painting ... from Stephen Quiller:

1. See the stroke before you paint it.
2. Variation: light against dark, transparent against opaque, warm against cool, etc.
3. Rhythm in brush strokes
4. Create both negative and positive shapes
5. Create depth with overlapping forms
6. Decisions on paintings come up again and again, so push through the painting... MAKE THOSE DECISIONS!

Be Still My Art,

Kay

Daydreamer... still in Progress

All of last week I spent at the hospital with my mom who has terminal cancer.  This is a particularly difficult time for me since I have cared for my mom for the past 16 years.  Letting go is never easy.

While at the hospital I used the time to go through old sketchbooks looking for usable hints I might have written down and to go back through some of the books I have that I hadn't looked at in a long time.  I think sometimes it is fun to realize how far you have come or in some cases where you are stuck!!!  One of the books I looked at was Watercolor Wisdom by Jo Taylor.  What a great book... so full of information and exercises to do.  It was in looking through her book that I realized I am sort of stuck  and need to do a little bit more exploring to really find what I have to say.  Time will tell if I really do that or not.  I am pretty big on staying in my comfort zone right now.


I didn't get to do much painting last week, but yesterday and today I have spent doing a little painting just to escape from what is going on with my mom.  Yesterday I spent putting details in the back ground... felt so good to be in control of something!  Then today I spent covering up those details using a technique I found in Alex Power's book Painting People in Watercolor-A Design Approach.

I really have a long way to go on this but am making some progress slowly but surely.  

Judy Morris believes there are five stages to a painting...

1. idea stage
2. drawing stage
3. just paint everything
4. go back and finish the painting
5. use magnifying glass or gray cardboard viewing card to look at the finished painting.

Be Still My Art,

Kay

My Color Notebook and More Tips... (Oh! No! Not more on Value!)

The past several days have been especially difficult as we had to put my Mom in the hospital on Saturday.  She apparently has cancer that has spread to several places in her body.  We will know more on Wednesday but until then I am struggling to maintain some control... Mom has lived with us for the past 16 years so it will be especially difficult to let her go.  I sit at the hospital desperate to separate myself from the situation so I work on art related things that can be done on the "fly" with few supplies.  Today I penciled in some quick exercises in one of my sketchbooks so that when I had a minute I could just add the color to them and my samples would be nice and tidy in an actual book instead of "floaties" that tend to disappear.  When I got home tonight I just had to hold a paint brush in my hand for a while (at least I can control that, right?) so I painted a few of the samples.

I can also round up all the "floaties" and put them in the book and everything on color will be in one place.... well, almost everything on color.  What about you?  Do you keep notes on mixing colors and samples of different formulas?  What do you keep yours in?

I hope you are starting a notebook on value... if so, here are even more tips that I found on a handout that I have.

• Place a middle value first for a better grasp of the whole range of value and to reveal light areas.  Add darks last.
• Full value range paintings lack a dominance... omit unnecessary values.
• Take a black and white picture of your painting.
• A small halo of light accents an edge where it meets a dark.  Conversely, a small gradation of darker value will relax the same edge.
• Keep middle value paintings in the #4 to #7 range... middle values hold a painting together.  We need middle values in large areas or shapes for cementing.  They are the walls that support your windows of light or upon which darks can be patterned.
• Dark value paintings should be kept in the #5 to #10 range.  They give punch, drama and like light values can be used for structural unity. 
• Light value paintings should be kept in the #1 to #5 range.  Light values give life, breath and sparkle to a composition and can be used for structural unity.
• A photo of a sunlit subject usually blackens cast shadows.  Lighten these and put more color into them.
• Alternate value contrasts along extended edges.
• It takes a value change to separate a tree from the sky.  Don't rely on a color change to separate it.  Even worse, don't rely on texture.
• Most brighter colors come to full intensity in mid-value
• Give most of your attention to the four to seven largest pieces of value in your painting.  If these few large hunks are not the most distinguished shapes you can make, your painting will fail.

Haven't had a chance to work on "Daydreaming" but maybe soon I will have an update on it.

Be Still My Art,

Kay

A Few Tidbits on Color and my WIP

These are just a few tidbits on color that you may already know... hope you don't mind a short reminder.

   If you want a color to look:                 Paint next to it:

• More intense                                   Its complement
• Less intense                                    A more-intense version of the same or a near-hue

                                                                          (Its neighbor on the color wheel)

• Darker                                            A lighter value
• Lighter                                            A darker value
• Cooler                                            A warmer color
• Warmer                                          A cooler color

A color that is surrounded by black or a dark value will appear lighter, brighter and larger than it actually is.
A color surrounded by white or a light value will appear darker, duller and smaller than it actually is.

More to come on color at a later time...

I worked on "Daydreamer" today and it seemed that the more I painted on it the more that needed to be done.  Ever get to that point in a painting where you just really have to push yourself to "just put paint on the paper" and not get caught up in all the little details that will come later?  I could have spent all day on just one little section, but I like to paint the entire painting and hold off on the details until last.

Doesn't look like a lot of progress... but any time you are moving forward it is a "good thing", right?

Be Still My Art

Kay

Work in Progress... values

Things felt good this afternoon as I had some uninterrupted painting time.  As I worked on this painting I was thinking a lot about the values I had planned.  Instead of working the entire painting like I did yesterday in just trying to get some color down, I started working more on individual areas of the painting.  It is difficult to judge the values when you don't have much color surrounding the area you are working on.  So, I pulled out an old value chart that I probably cut out of a book and punched holes in... so I had something to compare the values to.

Value chart on white paper

                           Value chart over the painting... what value would you say
                            the blue is?  It looks like a great middle area value to me...
                                only problem is it is supposed to be a dark value in that area.            

Here is the painting so far... remember it is a WIP!

Daydreamer.... in progress

I keep a poster on my wall that I made about analyzing a painting.  Of course it comes from some book that is long gone... sorry.  It reads:

All details must be eliminated so each object in the painting

is reduced to its basic shape.  Then the structural skeleton can be seen.

The examples of this are paintings by Grunewald and El Greco:

Altar Triptch by Grunewald

Kneeling Saint by El Greco

Notice how the paintings are reduced to three values in black, white and grey and then simplified by removing details and combining shapes.  I seem to be able to do that in my planning... now the trick is to carry it out in the final painting.  Sounds so easy, doesn't it???  Do you find it that easy to do?  Not me!

Be Still My Art,


Kay

More on Value and a WIP

My Mom (who is 90 years old) had some medical tests run last week and sitting in the lobby waiting brought back memories of when she had a stroke several years ago.  At that time I was in a critique class led by Polly Hammett.  Polly is a master at design and composition and really emphasized underlying abstract value designs.  She suggested that we take old art show catalogues and look at the value patterns of the winning entries and/or paintings that we liked.  By putting a piece of tracing paper over the photo one could see the larger value shapes in each painting.  I happened to have a sketch book that I had made by putting a sheet of drawing paper and then a sheet of tracing paper, until I had enough pages for the book.  To pass the time while at the hospital I started my Value Patterns Book...

Award winning paintings

Value Patterns of the paintings

Award winning paintings

Value Patterns of the paintings

Stephen Quiller

 I filled an entire sketchbook with the underlying abstract value patterns of winning watercolor paintings and also with the paintings of artist whose work I admire.  It was a very soothing exercise and I think I really learned a lot from doing it.  One thing I began to notice in all the value patterns was the use of large value shapes.

Value Patterns

Arne Westerman

Today I finished the drawing on my next painting and got the first glaze put on!!  Yea me!  Persistence and perseverance... one little step at a time.  Any progress is good progress... as long as it is progress in the right direction!

Work in Progress

Be Still My Art,


Kay

Gladiolus

Gladiolus
Watercolor and Pen and Ink
4.5" X 13.5"

I wish I could say that I stepped out into my yard the other day and cut these gorgeous gladiolus from my flower bed... but since I have a major brown thumb I would be fibbing if I said something like that.  The best I can do is pick them up at the store... but they are still gorgeous.  I took a few minutes after breakfast to do a contour line drawing of one of the stems.  I wanted to do a small painting to see if I liked it enough to do a larger one later.  For me this painting wasn't much fun.  That "wow" factor had been missing from the get go so my heart never was in it.  Even though it was a small painting I really had to push myself to stay involved enough to even complete it.  Do you ever find yourself in a spot like that?  Since I had started it I felt like I should follow it through to the end but it was almost like punishment.  So, maybe for me a lot of the "Wow!" factor comes in the "discovery" of the painting and the planning that goes into the painting at the start.  I love to design the paintings and work with the values and most of that preplanning was missing from this painting.  Maybe next time I should work with a better light source and the dazzle that is so necessary for me will be there!! 

Be Still My Art,

Kay

So Many Paintings, So Little Time

It seems to me lately that I go to bed on Monday and when I wake up the next day it is Friday already!!  Time is just whizzing by!  And that creates a dilemma... I have so many watercolor paintings to be painted and so little time to paint them.  Yesterday the grandchildren were all here for Father's Day and everyone went to the community pool to swim... except me and I went to take photos!!  With 3 boys and a girl all ranging in age from 15 to 4 I knew I was bound to get at least one great painting prospect ... and sure enough I got two!

I know you are probably wondering what I see in this photo that is worth painting (besides my granddaughter!)  Look what happens when I put it in photoshop and tweak it a little:

I really like the radial composition and I think that is what makes this work even though her face is right in the center.

And this photo:

becomes this reference for a painting:

Now all I have to do is complete the three paintings I am working on and I have two more ready to start... well almost ready.

How about you?  How many paintings do you have going?  And, more importantly, do you have enough time in the days to do all the paintings you have in your head?  Me either...

Be Still My Art,

Kay